The cast of "The Strangers."                                                          Photo courtesy of Chalk Circle Collective

            The fledgling Chalk Circle Collective (Megan Carmitchel, Michael Cusimano, Frankie Errington) describes its mission and its work as artist-centered, and I quote from its mission statement, to “empower artists to take ownership of the theatrical experience by providing a safe space to collaborate, to risk, and to innovate.”
            This company’s first multi-actor production (following the two-handers “Turn of the Screw” and “Constellations”) couldn’t be more in line with that avowed mission. Christopher Oscar Pena’s epic “The Strangers,” which Chalk Circle is giving its West Coast premiere, is a collaborative effort from a cast of eight local actors, director Coleman Ray Clark, and a sizable production team (for this staging is in the Old Town Theatre, formerly the home of Cygnet). It’s also risky, because “The Strangers” blurs the fourth wall, weaves in and out of fiction, and is guaranteed to mess with your head by the time its two and a half hours have concluded.
            As for innovative, that will depend on your definition of the word. I will say that I haven’t seen a production quite like this one. “The Strangers” can be unsettling at times and definitely confounding. If it was playwright Pena’s intention to re-imagine Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” to some extent, he’s more than succeeded. These characters, mired in the darkness and inscrutability of Everytown, are not the folksy folks of Grover’s Corners, even at their most troubled.
            All this said, Pena’s storytelling is serpentine and self-indulgent, a piercing inquiry into the ditches and booby traps of life – alienation, disappointment, depression, suicide, ennui – right up to the point that he seems to tell us, as if enervated by his own ruminations, “F-it, neither love nor happiness is destined to win out.”
            A staging of “Our Town” is the backdrop for the story, though it doesn’t factor in any paramount way into what’s going down. Yes, the apparent protagonist cris (Steven Lone) has returned to what may or may not be his hometown because of the production, and there’s a brief snit about who’s made the cast and who hasn’t. But you could take the “Our Town” thing out completely and it would hardly make a difference.
            Of greater exigency for cris is his fast-track attraction to dave (Jake Bradford), who’s there at the outset to show him around town.
            Meanwhile, dave’s sister Emily (Kimberly Weinberger) is, she says, in love with pearl (Michael Amira Temple) but nonetheless urging pearl to go through with her intention to kill herself. Uh, OK.
            There’s niegel (Michael DiRoma), who is passionate about a protest event and is angry that diego (Javier David), cris’ brother, is more interested in canoodling with his girlfriend (Kelsey Venter).
            Leave us not forget a wedding planner (Venter again) and a homeless woman (Lauren King Thompson), both of whom have a lot to say about the state of impermanence and despair respectively.
            Most of the characters – or other characters portrayed by cast members – speak directly to the audience in monologues. Have to say, it’s a device I’ve never warmed to in the theater, though heaven knows it’s been employed a lot.
            There are two gripping monologues just the same, and they are by far the strongest moments of Pena’s text. The first is delivered by the homeless woman, accomplished by Thompson in an almost matter-of-fact tone that gives her observations just the right mixture of street wisdom and cynicism. Even better is cris’ second-act-opening soliloquy about his relationship with his Catholic mother, about his homosexuality and his mother’s reaction to it, about his ethnic heritage, about who and what God is, about the elusiveness of a genuine romance or the absence of just being held, and loved.
            That is indeed a helluva lot to cover in one monologue, yet its very overload of thoughts and emotions compels us to listen and feel. It’s an affecting and impressive turn from Steven Lone, one that the remainder of “The Strangers” has no chance of living up to afterward.
            The story winds its way toward the occasion of a wedding between cris and dave, though one that feels foredoomed. When a betrayal is revealed, the doubts are heightened. What happens next is … let’s leave it at that. Pena will take you somewhere you probably – likely – did not expect to go.
            These characters are strangers when it comes down to it, from each other and from themselves. I can’t be sure that’s what Pena is endeavoring to tell us utmost, but such a conclusion is inescapable.
            Director Clark is a friend of the playwright’s, and Pena himself was present during early rehearsals, so it can be safely assumed that his vision is faithfully translated to the stage. It’s done so with an industrious cast in support of Lone (though this is really an ensemble piece). I only wish that Michael Amira Temple, who’s always a dynamic presence onstage, had more to do.
            Though there was a delay in the house on opening night, “The Strangers” proceeded evidently with all its technical enhancements intact, including sound, lighting and fog effects that factor into the production in a startling and revealing way.
            Here’s acknowledging the contributions of Sammy Webster (lighting design) and Syd Showers (assistant lighting design), Steven Leffue (sound design) and technical director Chad Ryan.
            “The Strangers” is a bit strange, but as with innovative that’s a relative term. Even if it’s trying too mightily to be meaningful, it’s an adventurous slice of theater. It’s also a bold step forward for Chalk Circle Collective.
            “The Strangers” runs through Nov. 30 at the Old Town Theatre.

There's nothing like a selfie among friends, as here, in "Rent."          Dupla Photography / Jason Sullivan

            Nearly 30 years after its Off Broadway premiere, Jonathan Larson’s “Rent” is enjoying an enduring lease on life.
            Just take San Diego: In 2022, the “25th Anniversary Farewell Tour” of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical visited the Civic Theatre downtown. You just had to know that this beloved show wasn’t going anywhere. More recently, San Diego State’s Musical Theatre program staged “Rent” last May. Now, in a partnership with Diversionary Theatre, New Village Arts in Carlsbad is presenting its “Rent” for a 100-seat audience, with the University Heights theater’s own 100-seat production due next spring.
            Me, I’ve seen “Rent” four or five times – the first at La Jolla Playhouse back in ’96 when the rock musical made its West Coast premiere. NVA’s “Rent” directed with spark by Kym Pappas is the first time I’ve experienced the show in more intimate confines – a plus – and the first time I’ve experienced it with recorded music instead of a live band on stage – a negative, but not as mitigating as I’d imagined.
            But here’s the irony part: New Village’s “Rent” with its exuberant, sincerely committed young cast is, to my memory, the most emotionally raw presentation of the musical I’ve seen. So why was I less affected emotionally than I’ve been in the past? It has to be because I’ve seen “Rent” enough times now that I know it well, its joys and its tragedies. I foresee them, I expect them and I’m braced for them.
            It’s come to be that way, for me, even with musicals far older than “Rent” – like “Fiddler on the Roof,” which I saw again, for the umpteenth time, this past summer at Moonlight Amphitheatre.
            This admission of stoicism is not a reflection on “Fiddler” or on NVA’s “Rent,” an in-many-ways electric production that is true to the core of Larson’s adaptation of the opera “La boheme.” Nor is it a commentary on “Rent” possibly being “dated”: though set in NYC’s East Village at the height of the AIDS crisis, “Rent” has lost none of its urgency, because it’s not about a time period or a thing, it’s about people. Friends. Lovers. People who care about each other just as we care about those who are close to us, those who reach out to us and we reach out to.
            What struck me most about seeing “Rent” again, however, was the incredibly nuanced and beautiful music and lyrics Larson created. Here’s the score that can stir your inner being, as with the tender “Without You” and the timeless “Seasons of Love,” but also entertain for laughter – “Tango Maureen,” for one, the recurring “Christmas Bells” sequences for another. I’d forgotten how rousing “What You Own” can be and how ideal “La Vie Boheme,” sung by the company, is in capturing the spirit of these interconnected human beings in their raging, difficult lives.
            That’s why I didn’t miss the live-band-onstage as I much as I thought I would. It’s the songs. Just the songs. I was reminded – as I am every time I attend a performance of “Rent” – of what we lost when Larson passed away the night before his show began previews Off Broadway.
            Much of the success of NVA’s scaled-down production goes not only to Pappas, for whom “Rent” is a personal favorite, but to choreographer Tamara Rodriguez, music director Elena Correia and scenic designer Christopher Scott Murillo, who has taken advantage of every possible space in the theater to honor a setting that is typically accomplished with towering scaffolding and more.
            There must have been some first-time “Rent” audience members at New Village Friday night, but from the general crowd reaction, I suspect they were few.
            Still, for the uninitiated: Mark Cohen (Brennen Winspear) and Roger Davis (Josh Bradford) are roommates in a flat that erstwhile friend/current landlord Benny (Juwan Stanford) is threatening to evict them from. (The show’s title song reflects their predicament.) Mark is an aspiring filmmaker who carries a movie camera around like a security blanket for his loneliness (though the likable Winspear portrays him with such good-natured awaremess that he doesn’t seem that lonely). Roger, a singer/songwriter in quest of that one great song, knows that this might be his legacy – he has been diagnosed HIV-positive.
            Roger’s circumstances aren’t changed, but his heart is, when he meets downstairs neighbor Mimi Marquez (Lena Ceja), a lightning bolt of vivacity and animation in spite of her drug addiction. This relationship is paralleled by that between gay professor Tom Collins (Van Angelo) and the charming, cross-dressing Angel (Xavier J. Bush).
            Back to Mark: He’s been dumped by performance artist/activist Maureen Johnson (Shannon McCarthy, savoring the showiest part in the musical) for an uptight attorney (Eboni Muse, right there with McCarthy in the savoring-the-part department.)
            Everyone’s destined to some extent for moments of exigence, reckonings of self and at worst loss. Larson’s sensitive score carries them through the choppy waters from which not everyone will surface intact.
            Thirty years on, the Maureen solo performance (“Over the Moon”) feels excessive and the first act of “Rent” in general way too long. There are still enough highlights of jubilant anarchy and sanguine philosophy (not to mention jaundiced fun with the holidays, Christmas most of all) that the show neither lags nor sinks inexorably into its sadness.
            Director Pappas has plainly given her cast the freedom to take their characters to the emotional edge, seen and heard by all but with Ceja (case in point the fervent “Out Tonight”) and Angelo (brokedown as brokedown can be in the aftermath of Angel’s death) in particular. Bradford’s Roger and Winspear’s Mark are right up there with the best Rogers and Marks I’ve seen with this show.
            All right. I’ve seen “Rent” yet again. So I’m done. Oh, wait a minute: Diversionary’s “Rent” will be here before I know it. (It opens next May.) The season of love stretches on and on. In “daylights, in sunsets, in midnights” and beyond.
            “Rent” runs through Dec. 24 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.

Joanna "JoJo" Levesque as Tess McGill in the "Working Girl" musical.                 Photo by Rich Soublet II

            La Jolla Playhouse’s world-premiere musical adaptation of “Working Girl” may look like the 1988 film, a likable and successful rom-com disguised as a female empowerment trip, but it sounds like Cyndi Lauper.
            Does it ever!
            Lauper, with a few friends contributing, wrote the poppy music and storytelling lyrics for this new show directed by Christopher Ashley (the outgoing Playhouse artistic director’s last gig at LJP before moving on to Roundabout Theatre Company in NYC). I can’t recall the last time I heard a stage musical written by one composer that was as signature identifiable as this one. From the opening “Something More” to the triumphant “Working Girl" title song, Lauper’s brand of upbeat, catchy-chorus “eighties-ness” resounds. “Working Girl” the musical’s battle-cry is not “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” but “Girls Just Want to Have Fun (and Respect).”
            That’s where the author of the show’s book, Theresa Rebeck, comes in. While the “Working Girl” film was plenty of fun, remember that it was written by a man (Kevin Wade) and directed by a man (Mike Nichols). Rebeck, an experienced playwright and creator for television  (“Smash”) and film as well, has kept “Working Girl” in the 1980s but has elevated its conscience and enlightened its point of view for 2025 audiences. Her script pays more than lip service to the empowering of a heroine. Rebeck’s Tess McGill (played in La Jolla by Joanna “JoJo” Levesque of Broadway’s “Moulin Rouge”) doesn’t stand up for herself in a man’s world all alone – in this “Working Girl” she’s supported by a cadre of fellow Wall Street support staffers united against those who take them for granted and who refuse to value them as not only women but individuals. This isn’t just “Working Girl,” it’s “Working Girls,” as we are reminded at the end of the show.
            The Cyn character, Tess’ BFF memorably portrayed in the “Working Girl” film by Joan Cusack, is a far more prominent, and serious, presence in Rebeck’s adaptation. This Cyn (Ashley Blanchet) is again Tess’ confidante and protector, but like her friend she’s strong, proactive and not to be underestimated.
            The other secretaries are game for having fun with absent boss Katharine’s high-priced, excessive wardrobe closet in one of the musical’s best scenes, but they’re also loyal (well, except for one) compatriots in Tess’ deception to get ahead in the corporate arena, a deception that as in the film is completely justifiable.
            Even the story’s antagonist, the ubiquitous Katharine Parker, is given a makeover in the “Working Girl” musical. While Sigourney Weaver was just about perfection in the role on screen, her character was unlikable, even mean, and her ultimate comeuppance in the film just as mean back at her. (“Get your bony ass out of my sight,” she was told off.) Rebeck gives Lesley Rodriguez Kritzer plentiful opportunity to be snippy and dismissive of Tess (and many others), but there’s far more comedy in the character onstage – she’s almost likable in spite of her faux superiority and robbery of Tess’ grand acquisitions idea. She isn’t banished from the story’s climax with a humiliating insult either.
            Rebeck’s supportive portrayals of the women of “Working Girl” are expressed in song as well, with Lauper giving Tess numbers in which to assert herself, like “Something More” and “When the Penny Drops” and of course the closing, anthemic “Picture It” which finds even the mostly clueless male characters singing along.
            A cool touch, by the by: The accompanying all-woman band at the Playhouse is led by Julie McBride and features Alex “Goldie” Golden on keyboards, Elena Bonomo on drums, Vivi Rama on bass and Meg Toohey on guitars.
            The two principal male characters in this “Working Girl” differ from the film, with mixed results. In the movie Harrison Ford did his best with the rather bland Jack Trainer role, the man Tess collaborates with and finds love with too; here, Jack (Anoop Desai) is from Minnesota but of Indian heritage, and he has much more personality and sense of humor, and more to do.  His cocktail-drinking Act One “Can’t Trust Nobody” is exceeded by the dance-powered “Dream in Royalty” in the second act, both of which broadly belie the image of the money-grubbing Wall Street suit who has no real idea how to enjoy himself away from the market floor.
             Then there’s Rebeck’s reimagination of Mick, the two-timer Tess is involved with. At La Jolla Mick is an aspiring, long-locked rock singer and guitarist – his more-to-do is superfluous. I could have lived without either of the two numbers (“Staring You Right in the Face” and the cringy “Get You Hot”) to which he is central.
            The mini-scenes with Katharine, the “victim” of a skiing accident, in hospitals across the Pond are a delight. So is her marvelously conceived accident scene before them.
            Like a lot of new musicals – and many new plays – “Working Girl” is longer than it needs to be right now and could stand some pruning in spite of how consistently enjoyable it is. Minimizing Mick would be a start. Maybe give Jack one song but not two.
            This staging is technically stunning: AMP Scenography featuring Erica Jiaying Zhang brings electric and seamless transitions onstage from board room to Staten Island Ferry to Katharine’s lush bedroom. Hana S. Kim’s projection design resurrects the glittering steel reaching to the sky and the deep blue harbor of the Big Apple in the late ‘80s. The citified “Working Girl” logo is detailed down to the point of having glowing automobiles moving along beneath it. The city that never sleeps, you know.
            The power suits worn by all the Wall Street types are suitably ‘80s -- they sure look anachronistic by the standards of today's post-COVID, relaxed office attire policies. Linda Cho is this production’s costume designer, with Charles G. LaPointe responsible for (‘80s) hair design and wigs.
            Eye-popping throughout, “Working Girl” already looks like a Broadway show. We’ll see what the future brings.
            Levesque does well as both the big-hair Tess and the aspiring-big-shot Tess, though I didn’t feel any tangible sparks between the character and the Jack character. Her most believable relationship is with Blanchet’s Cyn. They’re a comfortable pairing. Rebeck was intuitive and creative enough to emphasize their deep friendship and to make the lessons the two characters learn together more important than Tess finding her true man.
            I don’t know whether this was intentional when it came to casting, but in “Working Girl” the musical Kritzer’s Katharine and Levesque’s Tess are about the same height, compared to Sigourney Weaver towering three inches over Melanie Griffith in the movie. But regardless, it speaks well to the thought of the two female characters being equals, even if one of them doesn’t want them to be.
            More than a few lines from the original film are preserved in this new musical, among them Cyn’s telling Tess, as a cautionary realization, that dancing around in her underwear “doesn’t make me Madonna.”  Some gems you don’t try to re-polish even when you change mediums.
            “Working Girl” runs through Dec. 14 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre.

Richard Bermudez as Dr. Henry Jekyll, the character's better half.                      Karli Cadel Photography

            It takes nearly an hour and a half for Mr. Hyde to show his murderous self, but when he does in San Diego Musical Theatre’s graphic production of “Jekyll & Hyde the Musical,” look out. Put it this way  -- Jason Voorhees would be admiring.
            Stage blood is spilled and splattered liberally, while one particular killing is gasp-worthy. I come to praise SDMT’s production, not to bury it, for these visceral effects, without which this Frank Wildhorn (music)/Leslie Bricusse (book and lyrics) show would be stylishly costumed and somewhere between melodramatic and lurid – no more.
            This staging has something else remarkably going for it: a balls-out performance in the schizophrenic lead role by Richard Bermudez. Not only is he a fabulous vocalist but the sheer athleticism he invokes to inhabit the horrible hide of Edward Hyde is nothing short of prodigious.
            Bermudez’s performance rises above a show that’s a dark and eerie tale (based somewhat on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) but elongated  principally by the presence of standard-issue ballads given to its female characters – Jekyll’s fiancée Emma Carew (Dacara Seward) and the archetypical prostitute with a heart of gold, or at least a good heart, Lucy Harris (Melissa Musial).
            On the other hand, the opening number “I Need to Know” and the telling “This Is the Moment,” both rendered with muscular conviction by Bermudez, are essential dives into the character of the English doctor whose humanitarian motives ultimately undo him and wreak mayhem.
            This production boasts a huge cast, and it’s the ensemble numbers, choreographed for the small SDMT stage with ingenuity by Luke H. Jacobs, that are the most inspired in “Jekyll & Hyde” Case in point: the first-act romp inside the Red Rat, where the ladies-for-hire reside and where during “Bring on the Men,” Musial brings to mind Madeline Kahn’s Lili Von Shtupp in “Blazing Saddles.” Another highlight is the second-act-opening “Murder” (no context needed), with the company collectively expressing the shock over the gory crimes committed by some mystery fiend.
            That second act is far superior to the first frankly because it’s action-packed, and shorter. Even with its overall length, however, “Jekyll & Hyde” is an entertaining thrill ride in the hands of director Omri Schein, a versatile artist who has a smart way with material like this.
            This production affords some gifted actors character parts they can sink their teeth into as well: Tanner Vydos as Jekyll’s loyal and steady lawyer, Utterson; Ruff Yeager playing Emma’s father (and Jekyll’s reticent ally) Sir Danvers Carew; Cameron Blankenship as Lucy’s despicable pimp Spider.
            Everyone’s authentically costumed by Chong Mi Land, with compatible hair and wig design by Monique Hanson. Bermudez alone has hair to spare.
            I could fantasize during this performance about how SDMT’s “Jekyll & Hyde” would play if a.) it were staged in a larger theater and b.) it had the benefit of a live orchestra instead of recorded music. Bigger and better.
            Yet the smallish confines position Hyde, at his most out of control, so close to audience members I could see some of them recoiling. You wouldn’t have that at, say, the Civic Theatre. (This show did play there, in 2012, by the by.)
             I don’t know how many tickets are still available for “Jekyll & Hyde the Musical” at SDMT this Halloween weekend – it closes on Sunday. If there are any, that’s one way to get the you-know-what scared out of you.
            “Jekyll & Hyde the Musical” runs through Nov. 2 at San Diego Musical Theatre in Kearny Mesa.

John Rubinstein in "Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground."                            Photograph by Maria Baranova

            There are certain protocols one is expected to observe when in the audience for the performance of a play, among them not applauding spoken lines throughout. That’s for afterward, or in some cases if warranted after a particularly impactful scene when the house lights darken. Or, if absolutely impossible to suppress, after a main character’s empowered or passionate moment of monologue.
            But a very discernible sense of the audience wanting to burst into applause, and to do so many times, hovered above the North Coast Repertory theatergoers last night during John Rubinstein’s performance of “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground.” I was among them, scarcely able to hold back. The one-person-show script written by Richard Hellesen and drawn in part on words written or spoken before crowds by Dwight D. Eisenhower is an intended enlightenment on the military hero and 34th president of the United States, but also a searing indictment of the America today under Donald Trump.
            As Rubinstein told me in an interview a few weeks ago for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Ike is a largely overlooked figure in presidential history today, known by most for coining the term “military industrial complex.” There was more – much more – to the man, Rubinstein said with adamance.
            So there was.
         Over two hours and two acts, Hellesen and Rubinstein show us that Eisenhower was an avowed moderate politically but a man of stout principle and unwavering belief in the virtue possible in America, a nation where differences didn’t have to create enemies, where high-minded truths were celebrated not castigated or denied, where a president always put the people above himself.
            What the hell’s happened?
         The San Diego premiere of this much-produced one-person-show is directed by Peter Ellenstein, who first brought the script to Rubinstein, an accomplished actor on stage, in film and on television. (He broke through as a young man starring in “Pippin” on Broadway; I have followed his career from there to the acclaimed “Children of a Lesser God” film and the “Family” TV series and even, as I joked with him in conversation, a memorable bit in the so-bad-it’s-fun horror flick “The Car.”)
            Rubinstein is 78 now and portraying Eisenhower at age 72 when “This Piece of Ground” is set in 1962 on Ike and Mamie’s farm in Gettysburg, Penn. His is not a quiet, studied oration but a cranky and often passionate performance with Eisenhower even pounding a desk for emphasis at one point. There’s more of the general than the commander-in-chief in this figure on stage, though the script has Rubinstein devoting the first act to the military years and the second act to the presidency.
            As we drop in on Ike at home, he’s rankled about a poll published in a magazine in which historians have rated, top to bottom, U.S. presidents up to the year 1962. He’s been placed at No. 22, a designation defended by the scholars who deem him to be so-so, even mediocre. The magazine folded over to the ratings page becomes Rubinstein’s principal prop during the show; we keep waiting for him to hurl it across the room. He’s too dignified to tear it to pieces.
            The narrative goes that the retired Eisenhower is going to write a book about his years in public service – though he doesn’t really want to. After an opening phone call to that effect with his book editor, he can’t help himself but dictate into a tape recorder just the kind of self-analysis and candor that such a book might include if written.
            As Eisenhower rolls through the years, from growing up in Kansas with a strict father and a religious mother (who hated war, by the way, but always supported her son), to entering West Point, to the valor and terrors of World War II and onto into the campaign and presidential years, Rubinstein is tireless and ever on point, moving here and there around the comfortable living room set by Marty Burnett. A backdrop “window” shows the bucolic Pennsylvania farm country and the skies above that darken as a storm beckons, then arrives. Facilitating the trip through history and giving it visual enhancement are strategic projections by Joe Huppert of the historical personages and family members of Ike’s past.
            I acknowledge having known very little about Eisenhower when I sat down in the theater. He was supreme commander of the Allied forces, yes I knew that. He was the impetus for the interstate highway system, I knew that too. Not much more. So for me, and likely for many others, “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” is an illuminating history lesson and certainly a portrait of a man who, from a personal standpoint, they either don’t know or understand or even remember well.
            Like a No. 22 on a list of 35, right?
            Not being a historian myself, I don’t know whether Hellesen’s script idealizes Eisenhower in addition to profiling him. That may be so. Copious research would be needed to make a judgment either way.
            But I will say this: I’m thinking of Dwight David Eisenhower today far, far more than I ever have before, and my curiosity about him and his life has grown substantially.
            Hellesen does not portray Eisenhower as a man without flaws or failures during his two lives of public service to his country. If he had, no amount of commitment brought to the role by Rubinstein could give this play the weight of importance that it has.
            Then there’s that inescapable parallel between the Eisenhower principles and the unprincipled presidency of today. It’s likely that Hellesen was fully cognizant of that parallel in writing “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground.” Sometimes, he may be trying to tell us, history does not repeat itself – it sinks to the depths. We can only hope that someone else who truly loves America for its inherent good and for the good that its people can be, comes along to lead it, and honor it.
            “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” runs through Nov. 23 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.

"Arms and the Man" skewers love and war in Coronado.       Photo courtesy of Lamb's Players Theatre

            Not that there’s any doubt about what George Bernard Shaw thought of war in his searing “Arms and the Man,” but one line in the play – delivered by a “heroic” soldier! – all but shouts Shaw to the rafters: “War is a fraud! A hollow sham!”
            Romanticized love does not escape Shaw’s jaundiced eye either in this costumed affair set during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. When another of his characters declares life to be a farce, he might as well have been indicting the sort of swooning, breast-heaving romance coveted by “Arms and the Man’s” heroine, the lovely aristocrat Raina Petkoff.
            So was Shaw, not even 40 when “Arms and the Man” premiered in 1894 just an “old” cynic, or did he have a valid point about two entities – war and love – that had been so idealized by writers as or less estimable than himself?
            As Lamb’s Players Theatre’s high-style production of “Arms and the Man,” directed by Deborah Gilmour Smyth (who played Raina herself at Lamb’s in the early ‘80s) and populated by a fun-loving cast suggests, Shaw knew what he was doing.
            “Arms and the Man” actually begins when the war between Bulgaria and Serbia has ended after only two weeks of fighting, with the former winning – winning what is not completely clear. Read your history books. In the house of Petkoff, Raina (Megan Carmitchel) can scarcely sleep for the thought that her beloved, Major Sergius Saranoff (Spencer Gerber) will be returning from the fray. So will her father, Major Paul Petkoff (Manny Fernandes), though neither Raina nor her mother Catherine (Melissa Fernandes) seems that jacked up this prospect.
            In the wake of some unnerving gunfire outside, Raina is roused from sort-of-sleep by the intrusion through her window doors of an exhausted, sword-bearing mercenary (MJ Sieber) who had been fighting on the side of the Serbs. For Raina, fear quickly gives way to fascination with this sputtering soldier, a man for whom the concept of heroism is hard to swallow and who, he tells her, prefers to carry chocolates than ammunition in his cartridge belt. So when a Bulgarian solider (Jordan Miller) invades the Petkoff home searching for an escapee, Raina hides her harried intruder from capture.
            Sweets for the sweet? She’s also fed the weak-with-hunger mercenary from her own box of chocolates.
            Much of the laughter from this entire ruse stems from the involvement of Raina’s mother; the two form a conspiracy to keep this episode from the ears of the returning majors, Petkoff and Saranoff.
            The minute we meet Sergius Saranoff, strutting like a peacock in military uniform and obviously loving himself more than he can love Raina or any woman, our sympathies are with the mercenary, who later arrives at the house, taut and cleaned up and identified as a Captain Bluntschli. Maybe his and Raina’s first encounter couldn’t be called a meet-cute, but there were enough indications from the start that these two were fated for coupling.
            Heightening the hapless intrigue is the presence of Raina’s maid Louka (Lizzie Morse, understudying for Katie Karel the night I saw this show). Unhappy with her domestic lot and far shrewder than the lady on whom she attends, Louka feigns disgust at Saranoff’s transparent flirtations, but she can’t conceal preferring his swagger to the doting, lecturing attentions of the house’s head manservant, Nicola (John Rosen).
            Not surprisingly, Raina’s secret gets out, and it’s only a matter of time before all concerned learn the identity of the “chocolate-cream soldier” for whom she’s affectionately signed a portrait of herself. How that photo is discovered is part of the comic climax’s runaround.
            Shaw wrote these characters to be played broadly, and they are at Lamb’s, just as they were when I first saw “Arms and the Man” 10 years ago at the Old Globe. Emoting and gesturing are part of the playwright’s strategy to cast these figures as if not stereotypes, archetypes of romanticized lovers and idealized war heroes.
            No one does this more broadly than Gerber, a graduate of the Coronado School of the Arts who is making his professional debut here as the mustachioed, preening Sergius Saranoff. What a way to break into regional theater – with license to go all out.
            The versatile Carmitchel is as at home with farce every bit as she is with serious drama; her local resume testifies to that.
            Sieber may be known to area audiences for his visceral turns in Backyard Renaissance Theatre productions (most recently “A Streetcar Named Desire”) and at Cygnet Theatre, where he shone two years ago in its staging of “The Little Fellow (or The Queen of Tarts),” Kate Hamil’s comedy-drama. In “Arms and the Man” he’s able to make the frantic and exasperating mercenary of Act One as credible as the cool and sharp-witted Captain Bluntschli of Act Two.
            It’s always a hoot when the Fernandeses, Melissa and Manny, turn up in the same cast. They’re real pro’s who thrive on this kind of fare. (Interestingly, they’re pairing up as George and Martha – hardly your fun-loving couple – in Carlsbad Playreaders’ staged reading of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” on Nov. 3.)
            Not to be lost in the ebullient performances at Lamb’s is the period costuming of Jemma Dutra or the alacrity in which director Gilmour Smyth moves the story along.
            Two hours (with intermission), in and out.
            It was a strange feeling the night I saw “Arms and the Man” to be one of the few in the audience laughing out loud. Possibly the sedate crowd preferred to chuckle under their collective breath, or maybe many just didn’t understood the tenor of the show, or Shaw’s intent. I did hear one theatergoer behind me afterward, on the way out, say to another: “Well, that play had a lot of words, didn’t it?”
            I wonder if he realized how biting and insightful those words were, and are.
            “Arms and the Man” runs through Nov. 16 at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado.

Deja Fields and Carter Piggee in "Blues for an Alabama Sky."                                Photo by Jason Sullivan

            There’s more than a little Sally Bowles in Angel Allen, who like the chanteuse from “Cabaret” residing in an anxious Berlin in the 1930s finds escape in her performances and in booze, except that in Pearl Cleage’s “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” Angel’s residing in an early-Depression Harlem. Like Sally’s, Angel’s life is significantly a hot mess.
            But Angel’s got one thing going for her: friends in and around the apartment building she’s crashed in who care about her, starting with her best friend of all – Guy Jacobs, a gay costume maker who dreams of dressing the great Josephine Baker in Paris and who has taken Angel in after she’s lost a job and a gangster boyfriend. Across the hall is Delia Patterson, an earnest social worker with a good heart; and just a jolly “Let the good times roll!” away is the neighborhood doctor Sam Thomas, who endearingly calls his friend (and patient, we learn later) “Angel Eyes.”
            These are Cleage’s characters that inhabit Cleage’s play, giving it life, humor, pathos and relatability. Who among us is lucky enough to have such friends, especially when life deals us a bad hand – or even if we, in our weaknesses and transgressions, deal ourselves that bad hand?
            Moxie Theatre has opened its 21st season with “Blues for an Alabama Sky” under the direction of its artistic director, Desiree Clarke Miller. Though its 90-minute first act is sluggish, the drama- and action-packed second act contributes to this production being the most riveting since Clarke Miller assumed her leadership role at Moxie two years ago. Cleage is an expressive and artful playwright, having created a ‘30s Harlem where historical figures like Rev. Adam Clayton Powell is preaching the Good Word, where Margaret Sanger, advocating for birth control, is Delia’s inspiration, and where Langston Hughes is a poet for the mind and for social change.
            While the struggle for daily survival that Angel (Deja Fields) find herself in is the impetus for most of the first-act tension, it’s the arrival on the scene of a gentleman suitor from the South, Leland Cunningham (Carter Piggee), that ramps up the stakes for Angel and at the same time rattles her friendship circle. It’s as if Cleage has, narratively speaking, lit a slow-burning fuse beneath the floors of Guy’s (Kevane La’Marr Coleman) and Delia’s apartment.
            Prior to Leland’s arrival, we’ve been allowed to revel in the characterizations played out with vibrancy on a Moxie stage that now extends from end to end, mirroring the audience seating area and facilitating a set by Michael Wogulis that depicts Guy’s apartment and the next-door apartment of Delia.
           Coleman is as charismatic as I’ve ever seen him as Guy, without whom Angel might be destitute. He’s also nattily dressed throughout by costume designer Danita Lee. As Sam the doc, Xavier Daniels is so full of life and fun – and yet understated when his affections for the shy and romantically inexperienced Delia (Janine Taylor) begin to bloom – that one longs for a doctor like him. Do they exist?
             The versatile and emotive Fields is following up her star turn in last year’s “Clyde’s” at Moxie with this layered performance, one that doesn’t conceal Angel’s flaws and bad choices in order to win simple sympathy. Her Angel is someone with a case of the blues that won’t go away even when a true romance seems to beckon. Booze, on the other hand, always is what it is.
             The relationship between Angel and Guy, and the chemistry between Fields and Coleman, are the backbone and spirit of “Blues for an Alabama Sky.”
            Cleage’s Delia and especially Leland characters are less fully developed, and when the latter voices his scarcely contained disapproval of the post-Harlem Renaissance liberation of thought and self (and of any behavior outside the purview of his Tuskegee home), the direction of the story and of Angel’s personal destiny seem preordained.
           Its jazzy music fills and intimations of a sweltering heat envelop “Blues for an Alabama Sky” in romance and danger. Though the setting is one Harlem apartment building these lurk both inside and out.
           “Blues for an Alabama Sky” runs through Oct. 26 at Moxie Theatre in Rolando.

Shana Wride and Andrew Oswald as siblings in misery.                                      Karli Cadel Photography

            Christopher Durang may not have intended “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” to be a deconstruction of Chekhovian characters but that’s certainly one way to regard his inimitable absurdist comedy. As with so many of his Russian literary comrades, Anton Chekhov’s characters can be (and frequently are) brooding, morose, self-flagellating, prone to disillusionment and depression. Just maybe Durang imagined “What would happen if these people not only snapped out of it but let it all out, went a little nutso?”
            Make that happen and you have “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which I’ve seen three times now and just the other night in Cygnet Theatre’s brand-new intimate space The Dottie. It may be recency bias on my part, but this “Vanya and Sonia …” outshines even those I saw previously at Scripps Ranch Theatre and before that the Old Globe. It’s a delightful debut for The Dottie Studio, a production directed with high style by Anthony Methvin and featuring two of the finest performances of the year in Andrew Oswald as Vanya and Shana Wride as his adopted sister Sonia.
            The question that always surrounds this play is “Do I need to know the works and characters of Chekhov in order to ‘get it’”?
            No, though it’s more fun if you recognize some of the references to plays including “The Three Sisters,” “The Cherry Orchard” and “The Seagull.” The Chekhovian easter eggs are not dropped subtly in “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” so it doesn’t require an academic to connect with them. On the other hand, those who’ve never read a word of Chekhov will easily get into and appreciate a dysfunctional family story that at times feels like it’s been channeled through Samuel Beckett … or “The Twilight Zone.”
            Yi-Chien Lee’s peaceful, pastoral set evokes the beautifully sleepy environs of a country home in Bucks County, Penn. where outside of blue herons settling on a nearby pond not much happens. It’s here that Vanya and Sonia reside in a perpetual state of ennui, and in Sonia’s case, gloom. Their opening argument over the temperature of the morning coffee is about as lively as it gets in this joint.
            Things liven up considerably with the unexpected arrival of their gadabouting and completely self-absorbed sibling Masha (Eileen Bowman), she who’s been paying the bills to support a household where its current residents don’t work (and yet somehow employ a housekeeper who claims to have psychic powers). Accompanying Masha is a boy-toy wannabe TV “actor” who calls himself Spike (Sean Brew – a perfect fraternal brother name, no?) and who is prone to strut about in his underwear or at the very least sans shirt. This is uncomfortably and most attentively noted by Vanya, who is a closeted gay man.
            What happens isn’t the grist of weighty Russia novels (the prolific Chekhov wrote only one, “The Shooting Party,” but a slew of novellas and novelettes): Much fuss and furor swirls around a costume party at the former home of Dorothy Parker to which Masha has been invited – who’s going, who will wear what, et al; and the B-film star’s announcement at the end of Act One that she intends to sell the ancestral home.
            By the way, the reason for the Chekhovian names of these characters is explained early on, that the since-dead parents, both professors, had named their children after figures in the august writer’s plays.
            Meanwhile, it’s not enough that the self-deprecating Sonia is fiercely jealous of Masha, that Masha is tactless and egotistical to a prodigious degree, that Vanya is frustratingly world-weary and ever in the middle between the two, and that Spike is … well, Spike. Durang also utilizes the Cassandra housekeeper character (Daisy Martinez) for over-the-top antics and wise-ass remarks, then soon injects an innocent ingenue, Nina ( Emma Nossal) into the proceedings. It all gets very much on the verge of out-of-control comedy. It’s the poignancy of Sonia’s overriding loneliness and perception of a life unlived, and the suppressed urge to speak up and speak out inside Vanya that unearth the depth inherent in Durang’s play.
            The two most urgent and most affecting monologues of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” arrive, naturally, in the second act:
 Sonia gets a phone call from a man she met but barely remembered at the costume party, asking her for a date. The audience, yours truly included, are with her every awkward second on the phone. Will she accept? Does she believe this is really happening to her? Wride’s performance here is understated and heart-rending.
            Then there’s Vanya’s eruption in the middle of a strange performance of a play he’s writing about world-ending climate change. Discovering Spike has been texting during, Vanya goes off, deriding the shallow excesses of the present and aching for the lost simplicities of a past gone forever. Masterfully, Oswald will bring tears to your eyes.
            Bowman, in the meantime, is in her comic element as Masha, one of those roles she seems born to play. Fittingly, her costume-party persona is Snow White – it was Bowman, dressed as Snow White, who performed with Rob Lowe in that shuddering skit at the 1989 Oscars. It must be cathartic for her to be playing that part for laughs today.
             Three times is probably enough “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” for me, and if it is I can revel in the fact that I enjoyed this one completely. The new Dottie is a nice companion to Cygnet’s larger Clayes Theater where “Follies” wraps up on Sunday. Its seat numbers are a little hard to identify and you’re close to your neighbors, but it was comfortable enough for a show (“Vanya and Sonia”) that runs two and a half hours, with intermission.
           “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” runs through Nov. 9 in Cygnet’s Dottie Studio Theater in Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Robert Montano stars in the one-person show "Small."                                        Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Having had a father who worked at Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana and who was not only a Thoroughbred lover but an owner, I grew up to some extent around horse racing. I even met jockeys, those little but powerful men who sat atop 1,200-pound equine athletes and in so doing put their lives at risk.
            But until I saw and heard former jockey Robert Montano’s one-person show, “Small,” at the Old Globe, I didn’t know the harrowing insider details of what some of these little but powerful men go through to maintain their racing-eligible weight:
            Drugs (ironically called “Black Beauties”). Flipping (aka purging). Ingesting Lasix (long ago banned for even Thoroughbred consumption). Wrapping themselves in plastic wrap. Practically living in a sauna. Eating just enough to stay alive.
            This is only part of 65-year-old Montano’s life story, but it’s certainly the most unnerving. I was reminded, in conversation after the performance, that a jockey’s drastic physical self-sacrifice is not unlike the driven ballerina’s, the desperate fashion model’s, maybe even the struggling prizefighter’s.
            In a tireless performance that could be the equal of an athlete giving his or her 100%, Montano begins his story inside the Sheryl and Harvey White theater-in-the-round sharing his youth growing up in the ‘70s less than half an hour from Belmont Park racetrack in New York. With a religious mother who was a jewelry maker and an artist father, he grew up with love, discipline and, in the case of Mom, some helicopter parenting.
            Yet it was Bobby’s mother who introduced him to the excitement and glamor of the track (glamor that horse racing, sadly, has little of today outside of the Triple Crown). It was there that he discovered his idol: jockey Robert Pineda.
            “Small” is not an extended monologue by any means. Montano plays not only his younger self, but his parents and all the characters at the track with whom he became familiar – some of them less than reputable.
            It is teenage Bobby’s big dream to be like his hero, Pineda, and under the professional jockey’s mentorship he begins a fast-moving but arduous quest to take the reins of a Thoroughbred himself.
            The arduous is where the above-mentioned torturous ritual of making weight – stepping aboard the “Monster” as jockeys refer to the scales – goes down.
            Montano’s shirt is soaked with sweat 15 minutes into the performance, so you can imagine what it and his hair look like an hour in. (The show runs an hour and 45 minutes, which is long by one-person show standards.)
            Even if you’ve never heard or read about Robert Montano, you’ll know where events are headed. The kid who was so small in elementary school that he was mercilessly bullied begins to grow, and the young man who once prayed to be taller soon is now praying not to grow anymore.
            A 5-foot-8 man is not going to maintain a weight of 110 pounds or less – this is young Bobby’s fate.
            It is dancing that saves Montano, who shows us how this transformation happens. “Small” ends before we learn of the stellar career he has enjoyed from his 20s on -- onstage, on television and in films. You’ll want to read all about it after the show’s over.
            This is a lively, breathless production that can captivate even if you don’t know a fig about jockeys or horse racing. It’s directed by Jessi D. Hill. Sound design is by Brian Ronan, who takes us to the track and to the disco with style.
            In spite of its darker elements, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic and touched by Montano’s dramatized simple moments with the horses – like how it feels when that huge head nuzzles your face. That’s no small feeling.
            “Small” runs through Oct. 19 in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.

Liisi LaFontaine (left) and Cailen Fu are sibling rivals in "Huzzah!"                                    Photo by Jim Cox

            If you thought a Renaissance faire was nothing more than a grand outdoor dress-up party with a maypole and booze, you’d be mistaken. Uh, to an extent.
            Dressing up, drinking and the presence of a maypole are part-and-parcel of these
Ren faires, which have been around since the 1960s. But they’re also about community and about the freedom to be someone else (even a history or cosplay nerd) for a few hours. As with, say, Comic-Con, they’ve got their repeat attendees who take the whole thing way too seriously, but many who go just want to have fun, and what others think of their idea of fun, well, to the privy with them!
            It’s in this proud and adventurous spirit that the prolific husband-and-wife team of Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe (“Legally Blonde” on Broadway) have created “Huzzah!”, a world-premiere musical comedy at the Old Globe.
            “Huzzah!” is a musical comedy as advertised. It has an 18-song score that leans heavily on rousing ensemble numbers that allow the period-costumed characters to swing their tankards and kick up their heels and rock back and forth in merrymaking unison. It’s also frequently funny -- humor of the hard-PG-13 variety, unafraid to be bawdy, rowdy or even political.
            I enjoyed the hell out of it, and my personal experience with a Renaissance faire dates back two decades and was long ago consigned to a distant place in my memory.
            “Huzzah!” wrestles back and forth with what is a true Renaissance faire and to some degree the show regards these popular gatherings with a critical eye, but it never makes fun of them.
            Instead the conflict is personified through a family story, about a fictitious Kingsbridge Midsummer Renaissance Faire owned and operated by one Johnny Mirandola (Lance Arthur Smith). The faire is in serious financial trouble at the outset, which complicates his bestowing of the business upon his two daughters, Gwen (Liisi LaFontaine) and Kate (Cailen Fu). (There’s more than a little “King Lear” in this premise – more than we know, it’ll turn out.)
             Gwen, who’s been absent from the faire, has a smart head for business and has long ceased romanticizing it. The dreamier and more impetuous Kate loves the folks and the trappings of the faire so much that she can’t conceive of it as just a business operation.
            But their disagreement doesn’t last long. By the second song in the show, “Dragons,” the two have bonded and decided to see it – the mess the faire is in – through. Seemed like Gwen caved on this too quickly, but other, more emotionally charged conflicts between the siblings lie ahead.
            “Huzzah!” is beautiful to look at (scenic design by the dependable Todd Rosenthal, glorious costumes by Haydee Zelideth) and certainly diverting enough in its first 15 minutes or so. Then it gets an electric jolt of energy with the arrival at the faire of Sir Roland Prowd (Leo Roberts), a swordsman extraordinaire with a shady reputation, flowing locks reminiscent of a Hemsworth brother, and a muscular, soaring singing voice that rings out in the confines of the Globe’s main theater. “The Song of Roland” is part Josh Groban, part Orson Welles.
            By now you’ve probably guessed the source of that aforementioned more emotionally charged conflict between Gwen and Kate.
            This is the story of “Huzzah!”, basically: the equally matched battling sisters against the backdrop of the threatened faire. Is it enough to sustain a two-hour, 15-minute Broadway hopeful?
            Verily I tell you.
            Annie Tippe directs a cast of memorable and likable (or unlikable depending on what’s called for) characters. In the likable corner is Gareth (Anthony Chatmon II), the longtime faire lawyer who’s smitten with Gwen, feels outclassed by Sir Roland and who’s discouraged in his romantic wishes by a trio of happily deprecating lords (Kevin Pariseau, Mike Millan and Josh Breckinridge) in a hilarious number late in Act One. Likable but notorious is Anne Bonny the Pirate Queen/middle school teacher by day (Kate Shindle), she who keeps the faire well oiled. Then there’s Wayland Smith the sword-making blacksmith (Peyton Crim), the faire’s philosopher king with a forge.
            Though he wins cronies by his sheer indomitable charisma, Sir Roland is in a class by himself as the antagonist, and even as he exploits the most injurious aspects of the faire in his boasted quest to keep it authentic and untouched by technology, he’s hard to completely dislike. Even when he goes full RFK Jr. by insisting that the faire’s first-aid services be abandoned. 
            Gwen and Kate remain the anchors of “Huzzah!” – at loggerheads for much of the story but still, when it comes down it, family. Fu’s Kate has a touch of Glinda from “Wicked” in her; she’s shallow and materialistic and loves herself dearly. The boisterous “The Song of Kate!” number that opens the show’s second act finds her in full-blown self-indulgence. Fu is a talented comedian who can get laughs without saying a word or singing a note.
            LaFontaine, meanwhile, is steady and stalwart as the “responsible sister” who can’t help falling for Sir Roland but who possesses a fierce feminist heart and a solid grasp of right and wrong. It’s she who is destined for heroism on behalf of the foredoomed faire, those in it and of women in general, including her sis.
            There’s a plot turn late in “Huzzah!” that comes out of left field and really needed to be at least foreshadowed sometime earlier in the going. It’s critical to resolving Gwen’s and Kate’s differences. Possibly this could be smoothed out as the show moves beyond the Old Globe?
            For a spectacular in which the comic antics, verbal slings and arrows, sword fighting and choreography (by Katie Spelman) built into it are so entertaining, “Huzzah!” does possess a charming musical score too. “Drink in the Day” (no explanation required there) is raucous gaiety, “A Toast to the Bride” sheer naughtiness, while the sea chanty-like “The Stowaway” featuring LaFontaine and Chatmon and the sisters’ childlike melody “Holly Tree and Ivy Vine” are tender and affecting.
            Crim’s “The Weight In Your Hand,” while drawn out, is stirring, and “The World We Live In” with LaFontaine out in front of the company is a big contextualizing climax.
            On opening night, more than a few theatergoers came dressed in Renaissance faire attire, making some of them too flowy for their seats. That’s one way to get to know your neighbor.
            In case you’re interested there’s a Renaissance Faire Costume Guide out there on the Web.
            “Huzzah!” may not redouble interest in Renaissance faires, but who knows? It might bring back doublets.
            “Huzzah!” runs through Oct. 19 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.